What happens when the New York City Police Commissioner wants his Deputy Commissioner for Public Information to ask the press for restraint?

There’s been an epidemic of the “knockout game,” where young males sneak up on unsuspecting people and punch them, and the commissioner wants to turn down the volume. But only two newspapers are willing to downplay the epidemic of violence: the Village Voice and yes, The Jewish Daily Forward.

It’s unlikely that either paper would bend to the will of a police commissioner, but that’s how the fictional story played out in last Friday’s episode of “Blue Bloods,” where Commissioner Frank Reagan (Tom Selleck) ordered his DCPI Garrett Moore (Gregory Jbara) to muzzle the media.

“Blue Bloods” follows the lives of three generations of the Irish-American Reagan family, all involved in law enforcement.

It was a little tricky telling who was a real Hasidic Jew and who wasn’t on 13th Avenue in Boro Park earlier this week. The CBS police drama “Blue Bloods,” starring Donnie Wahlberg, was filming there, and the extras dressed as Hasidim were throwing the real members of the tribe for a loop.

YouTube

If you watch the clip that someone filmed and put on YouTube, you can see why telling the Jews from the non- would have been hard. This is one instance where the actors didn’t look like they had pasted-on fake beards and side curls. We extend kudos to the makeup and wardrobe departments.

The video is worth watching if only to see one (real) Hasidic man walking around dumbstruck at how authentic the extras look. “I can’t believe it,” he keeps on exclaiming. “It’s mindboggling. You have to watch out. You don’t know who you’re talking to.”

AIPAC is kicking off its conference under a cloud of controversy over Benjamin Netanyahu's planned speech.
As the meeting starts this morning, a fresh dispute raged over Shmuley Boteach's nasty attack ad aimed at White House security chief Susan Rice.

Of Rosanne Barr, King David Kalakaua and 9 other things about Jewish Hawaii

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